YW WOMEN’S CENTER at EBBY’S PLACE Empowering Women to Reach Self-Sufficiency in Dallas, Texas YWCA OF METROPOLITAN DALLAS OCTOBER 2014 PREPARED BY The buildingcommunityWORKSHOP is a Dallas based nonprofit community design center seeking to improve the livability and viability of communities through the practice of thoughtful design and making. We enrich the lives of citizens by bringing design thinking to areas of our city where resources are most scarce. To do so, the bcWORKSHOP recognizes that it must first understand the social, economic, and environmental issues facing a community before beginning work. SUPPORTED BY As the largest community foundation in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) works with families, companies and nonprofits to strengthen our community through a variety of charitable funds and strategic grantmaking initiatives. The foundation professionally manages more than 900 charitable funds and has awarded more than $1.3 billion in grants since its founding in 1953. Increasing financial stability of working families is one of the two key focus areas of CFT’s community impact funds. To support this area, CFT has launched the Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) Institute. The D3 Institute is designed to provide organizations that offer programs and services for low-income working families the power to accelerate their development of enduring solutions to the social and economic problems facing this population. www.cftexas.org/D3 2 YWCA of METROPOLITAN DALLAS The YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas (YW) is dedicated to addressing the most critical needs for women in Dallas County, offering programs in the areas of financial literacy, pregnancy and parenting education, and women’s health services. YW’s goal is to educate and guide women toward becoming self-sufficient and to advocate for sound public policy that supports these efforts. YW empowers women through three primary programs: • YW Financial Empowerment helps women achieve financial goals and address hurdles that impact their ability to succeed by providing benefit screenings, financial workshops, coaching, and matched and non-matched savings accounts. Services are located at over 50 host sites, including community centers and churches. • YW Women’s Health coordinates breast health care services for medically underserved women through numerous clinics across Dallas County, also providing transportation services for those in need. • YW Nurse-Family Partnership sends Registered Nurses directly into the homes of first-time, low- income mothers-to-be to administer care and instruction. Services begin within the first 26 weeks of pregnancy and continue through the child’s second birthday. YW has been a cornerstone in the Dallas community for over 105 years, now serving approximately 5,000 clients per year, about 87 percent of whom are women. After operating as a virtual organization, with dispersed services delivered at partner locations, YW is opening the YW Women’s Center at Ebby’s Place located at 2603 Inwood Road in Dallas in early 2015. ABOUT THIS STUDY YW chose to engage bcWORKSHOP as part of an additional consulting service offered through the Communities Foundation of Texas’s Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) Institute. bcWORKSHOP is providing Dallas area nonprofit organizations with a data analysis package to inform decision-making on a specific problem or challenge defined by the non-profit. 03 YW City of Dallas DALLAS COUNTY YW Future YW Women’s Center at Ebby’s Place at 2603 Inwood Road 04 INTRODUCTION The YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas (YW) is moving from operating as a virtual organization with dispersed services to opening the YW Women’s Center Ebby’s Place located at 2603 Inwood Road in Dallas, increasing its public presence and ability to offer wrap-around services. As YW prepares for this shift, the organization is considering how to sustain its current clients, how existing and new clients access the Center, and opportunities for outreach and programming to neighborhoods and organizations nearby. This study provides contextual data on low-income women and families and the difficulty of making ends meet, local data on YW’s target clientele, visualization of YW’s current service delivery, and information on the neighborhoods, resources, and transit access near the new YW Women’s Center. The goal of this report is to aid YW in informed decision-making on their outreach and service delivery as they work to guide women toward self sufficiency. TABLE OF CONTENTS Working Poor Families 6 Women in Poverty 10 Low-Income Workforce 18 YWCA Clients 20 YW Women’s Center 28 Access and Travel Time 36 Conclusion 41 Appendix 42 Sources 46 05 LOW-INCOME FAMILIES THAT ARE WORKING 32.1% (2012) 2 of Working Families Nationally are Low Income % % 38.3% 77.2 70.6 of Working Families In Texas are Low Income 1 LOW-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES THAT JOBS IN OCCUPATIONS WITH MEDIAN ARE FEMALE-HEADED 3 ANNUAL PAY BELOW POVERTY (2012) 4 35.0 % 39.0 % 31.3 % 25.2 % LOW-INCOME WORKING FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN (U.S. 2012) 5 Nationally, 32.1 percent of all working families with childrenare low-income, with incomes less than twice the poverty level. Yet single-parent households, in particular single mother households, are significantly more likely to struggle to meet basic needs even when working. A working single mother household is more than three times as likely to be low-income as a working married couple household. Overall 32.1% Married Couple 20.0% Single Father 46.2% Single Mother 61.3% 06 WORKING POOR FAMILIES NATIONAL & STATE CONTEXT Today, “working” and “poor” are not mutually exclusive terms, and a wage-earning job does not guarantee ability to meet basic family expenses. Insufficient employment and inadequate wages have created a population that is characterized by phrases such as “overlooked and underpaid” and “working hard, falling short.” 6 People who are employed but still struggling to make ends meet have become a focus in the last decade as welfare reform in the 1990s resulted in an influx of low-income people, particularly mothers, into the workforce. Especially vulnerable to belonging to this population are part-time workers, women, single parents, racial minorities, immigrants, younger people, and those with a high school education or less. There are approximately 10.4 million low-income working families in the United States.7 More than 47 million people, including 23.5 million children, are considered working poor and that number is increasing even as the economy recovers from the 2008 financial recession.8 “Poor” people are officially defined as those whose annual income falls under the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), a threshold set by the government each year based on family size and composition.9 In 2012, the poverty threshold for a single person was $11,720; the threshold for a family of four with two children was $23,283.10 Yet the shortcomings of the official poverty measure, first calculated in the 1960s, are well documented: “The poverty threshold is not, however, representative of what a family actually needs for a decent living.”11 The measure was devised when food was a primary expense and is calculated by multiplying by three the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation. This formula does not take into account other primary expenses (such as taxes, housing, child care, health care, and transportation), non-cash public assistance, or the geographic variation in the cost of living and therefore is now commonly considered a poor measure of who is struggling to make ends meet.12 While much of this report focuses on individuals and families living in poverty, it should be recognized that many people living above the poverty threshold still struggle, as the official poverty measure is grossly inadequate in accounting for the realistic costs of basic family needs. Therefore, “low-income” will be used to describe an individual or family with income less than twice the poverty threshold; in 2012, that would be $23,440 for an individual and $46,984 for a family of four with two children. A person is considered “working” if he or she spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force in a year.13 DEFINITIONS Poor is defined as people or families living in poverty. That is, whose annual income falls under the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), an income threshold set annually by the government based on family size and composition. In 2012, the poverty level for a family of four with two children was $23,283. Low-Income is defined as people or families whose annual income is less than twice (200 percent) of the FPL. In 2012, the poverty level for a family of four with two children would be $46,566. 07 LIVING WAGES BY FAMILY TYPE IN DALLAS-PLANO-IRVING 14 Below are the earnings required for families to be self-sufficient and meet all monthly expenses—housing, food, child care, medical insurance, transportation, federal taxes, and other necessities—without any savings in the Dallas-Plano-Irving Metropolitan Division, from the Center for Public Policy Priorities’ Better Texas Family Budget tool. As reference, a minimum wage employee earns $7.25 hourly or $15,080 annually. 1 WORKING ADULT & 1 CHILD $41,496 = $20.75 = 2.7x Annual Income Living Wage Poverty Level of $16,057 % of jobs don’t pay enough to 69 meet this income 1 WORKING ADULT & 2 CHILDREN $46,872 = $23.44 = 2.5x Annual Income Living Wage Poverty Level of $18,769 % of jobs don’t pay enough 70 to meet this income 2 WORKING ADULTS & 2 CHILDREN $60,396 = $30.20 = 2.6x Annual Income Living Wage Poverty Level of (Combined) $23,624 % of jobs don’t pay enough 40 to meet this income 08 WORKING POOR FAMILIES Dallas County, and the City of Dallas in particular, has a poverty crisis.